Introduction - 2021.2 English

PetaLinux Tools Documentation: Reference Guide

Document ID
UG1144
Release Date
2021-10-27
Version
2021.2 English

PetaLinux is an embedded Linux Software Development Kit (SDK) targeting FPGA-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. This guide helps the reader to familiarize with the tool enabling overall usage of PetaLinux.

You are assumed to have basic Linux knowledge, such as how to run Linux commands. You should be aware of OS and host system features, such as OS version, Linux distribution, security privileges, and basic Yocto concepts.

The PetaLinux tool contains:

  • Yocto Extensible SDK (eSDK )
  • XSCT (Xilinx Software Command-Line Tool) and toolchains
  • PetaLinux CLI tools
Note: Vitis™ unified software platform is the integrated design environment (IDE) for creating embedded applications on Xilinx® microprocessors. Refer to Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Embedded Software Development (UG1400) for more details.

PetaLinux SDK is a Xilinx development tool that contains everything necessary to build, develop, test, and deploy embedded Linux systems.

Yocto Extensible SDK

The following table details the four extensible SDKs installed.

Table 1. Extensible SDKs
Path Architecture
$PETALINUX/components/yocto/source/aarch64 Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC and Versal® ACAP
$PETALINUX/components/yocto/source/arm Zynq-7000 devices
$PETALINUX/components/yocto/source/microblaze_full MicroBlaze™ ™ platform full designs
$PETALINUX/components/yocto/source/microblaze_lite MicroBlaze platform lite designs
Note: Microblaze_lite will be deprecated in future releases.
Note: Earlier, the eSDKs were extracted in the specified path but now they are in self-extractable TAR files. From 2021.1, your eSDK scripts have the same name and are extracted into <plnx-proj-root>/components/yocto when you run the petalinux-config or the petalinux-build command in the PetaLinux project. The project extracts the corresponding eSDK, for example, if you create a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC project, then only the aarch64 eSDK is extracted into the <plnx-proj-root>/components/yocto project.

XSCT and toolchains

For all embedded software applications (non-Linux), the PetaLinux tool uses XSCT underneath. The Linux toolchain for all three architectures is from Yocto.

PetaLinux Command Line Interface (CLI) tools

This contains all the PetaLinux commands that you require. The CLI command tools are:

  • petalinux-create
  • petalinux-config
  • petalinux-build
  • petalinux-util
  • petalinux-package
  • petalinux-upgrade
  • petalinux-devtool
  • petalinux-boot